3.11.11

Full speed ahead again

Now that I got the homestuff done, I had the time (and space) for the real deal. Those Death Commandos I painted earlier were bugging me. Something in them eluded the eye, in a bothersome way. So after a small amount of googlage I decided that the black parts need highlighting to take the dullness away. Semiconfidently I drybrushed the upper parts of whichever bodypart I deemed to be "in the light" with some gray. My plan was to highlight those parts that get some sunlight from a sun that's more or less in zenith.
What I didn't grasp (because I forgot) was that the sun doesn't shine with a tiny spotlight like my worklamp does, instead it provides more like a "circlestrafing" effect, a broader light. So the effect I got on the 'Mechs is maybe too "tight". I'll fix what needs fixing, if it looks a bit too dull.

The last two Lances were going to be the next ones I worked with, so that I'd finally have the pieces in a good recognizable form. Missing logos and the final details weren't that important to me. First of these last eight IS BattleMechs were going to be assigned to the infinite sea of BattleTech Mercenaries. Maybe my choice was a bit clichéd, but they ended up being Kell Hounds. The other option that considered really strongly was the Gray Death Legion but I thought that the KHs would be a bit more recognizable.
At this point I just divided the basic red-black pattern somehow. A couple of those tiny 'Mechs caused a bit of head scratching because I wasn't sure of how to share the colours. Here's the Red Gore + Black -combination:

Spider

Clint

Panther

Hunchback

Now the last Lance could've gone to just about any remaining IS faction, but as they had their important impact in the Big Story so far (I'm reading about the beginning of the FedCom Civil War now), I decided that ComStar should get a Lanceful of ComGuards at its disposal. At least I got some extra practice in "painting white".

On the base there's the Grey Primer, on top of that I liberally applied some Cold Grey and later applied a good amount of Stonewall Grey (with the same idea than with the aforementioned Death Commandos, but done better). As the final touch I, obviously, half-drybrushed the topsides with plain white so that the shadows still stay darker, but with a hint of white on them anyway.
I think it ended up looking decent, though the panel lines most likely need some fine tuning.

Cicada

Commando

Dervish

Grasshopper

Next step's going to be, if schedules and everything else allows: windows for the ComGuards (green?) and then metallic surfaces, washes, highlights and windows for the Kell Hounds. Depending on the mood I may return to the highlights of the Death Commandos, but we'll see about that when the time comes. I'm not going to run out of stuff to do in any case.